


Exodus

by delgaserasca



Category: Numb3rs
Genre: Apocafic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-21
Updated: 2006-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 21:15:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7285039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delgaserasca/pseuds/delgaserasca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Outrunning the end of civilisation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exodus

  
**i.**

“Colby, come on.”

But he can’t move. He sits on the sidewalk, head in his hands, and he just can’t move. He can just make out the wreck of the car crumbling in the flames, the stink of petroleum rushing through the air; smoke lining his nostrils and a sheen of soot across his face, gentle like a newborn’s touch.

“Colby, we’ve got to go. Colby, please!”

Never in all his life did he think it would be this way again: fear and adrenaline, fires in the streets and the numbing strike to his chest as he loses friends. They slip from his fingers like dream figures, sylphs. Except this isn’t a dream. This is carnage, here, in the streets of LA, like nothing he’s ever seen before. He feels like he’s been thrown back into combat but this time without a gun. Without a code to follow.

Megan’s hand shakes him from his reverie. “Move it, Granger, now!” Her face is pale, drawn; the light from fire draws out the hollows in her face. The desperation there kicks him into action, makes him stumble as he tries to stand. Megan hasn’t seen apocalypse before; she doesn’t know that beyond this there’s only more destruction, more death. She’s scared, but she’s still moving, still hoping. He owes it to her to keep going.

He takes her hand, and though there’s no-one behind them, they start to run.

 

 

**ii.**

They lost Don first. It was during the initial evacuation, sirens whining everywhere, throbbing through their temples like a gale force wind. Someone had set off the fire alarm and general panic had people scattering like leaves. The first twenty-four hours were manageable. Information was sketchy, but they were still in charge. The police forces were out on the streets, trying to stem back the tides, to calm the civilian population. Riots were common ground, something they’d seen before. Chaotic, but manageable. It was like herding sheep, really. Easy to contain. On the second day, news came through that the mayor had abandoned office. The riots were still rampant.

Megan was watching the news. “It’s madness out there. Mob mentality diffuses autonomy. Safety in numbers.” She turned to David and Don, sitting at their desks. “It’ll cool down eventually. There’s only so long that you can let go of individuality. The group will have to break down in the end; it can’t be sustained.”

Seven days later, and they’re under siege from angry civilians, all of them hurting and bitter. The Federal building is a prime target for action; a symbol of the government’s oppressive police state. The phones lines had been cut for thirty six hours, now, and someone had turned off the water supply. Don talks on his cell phone until the battery dies and then they’re caged up, like animals, pacing the ground, tired and nervous.

When the rumour ran through that the President had abandoned office, someone suggested making a run for it. Colby looked at his colleagues; it didn’t feel right. It wasn’t a good idea. But by that point, other people had latched onto the idea, forced upon by claustrophobia and fear, needing to get out. David turned to him, eyebrows raised. “Think we can get out of here?”

“I don’t think it’s a smart move.”

“Won’t make a difference if they open the doors downstairs,” Megan pointed out, “We’ll just have to run.”

At four o’clock, the doors burst open. David grabbed Megan’s hand; Colby followed Don down the fire escape. At the alley behind the garage, Don started to make a turn left.

“Where’re you going?” Colby tried to direct him with the rest of them.

“My dad’s out there with Charlie. I can’t just leave them.”

Colby despairs for a moment, and then nods. “We’ll be out past the junction to the interstate. The army training barracks are just beyond there.” He grabbed onto Don’s shoulder. “Past the interstate, ok?”

Don looked at him carefully for a moment, and then nodded tightly, patting his shoulder in return. Then he was gone. David yelled from the other end of the alley; somewhere on the other side of the building, the mob was filtering through. He could smell smoke rising from the top of the building; agents were running, evading, trying to get away. Gunshots rang out in the distance.

“Colby!”

He started to run.

 

 

**iii.**

A week passed. They’d made it to the training barracks but the place was a mess when they got there. The enlisted weren’t letting anyone in, just turning them away from the door. They’d waited outside for a couple of days and then heard news that most of LA was in rubble. That was when Colby decided it was time for them to move on, away from the trouble. All day, all night, the glow from the city lit up the horizon. They saw whole families dusting down the road, backpacks and household possessions boxed up, walking down the road like cattle.

One morning, Megan had woken up and looked around the landscape before turning to David. “I can’t believe this is happening.” Colby felt the same.

They tried to buy food off other people on the road, but people were instinctively wary of suits. Then Megan stopped a child from being run over by one of the hundreds of four-by-fours patrolling the roads and earned the three of them half a loaf of bread and a bottle of water. The water Colby kept a hold of, the bread they rationed. They kept walking.

Rumours filtered through the hot air, thick and heavy like smog. The nationalists had taken the capital. Rioters had blown up the high rise buildings in the city. There’d been some sort of terrorist attack, biological weapons, nuclear weapons but every time Colby stopped to ask someone, they didn’t get a reply. People were scared.

A month after the initial rioting, they made it to the state borders.

A high, barbed-wire fence with civilian militia patrols lined the border from right to left, as far as the eye could see. There was a gate, filtering people through. One man, a banker by the looks of things, lost it as he approached. _No, I don’t fucking have my ID, who the fuck you think you are asking me? We need to get away, you fucking hooligans! You assholes, you idiots, you fucking let me through—_

—bang—

Someone screamed; the suit fell back, bullet hole clear in his forehead. Colby reached for his gun, but Megan stopped him. “No. We have to go back. We have to find another way out.”

The three of them turned, and headed back towards the city.

 

 

**iv.**

Every time they passed a payphone, queues of people streamed past them; and yet every time they saw one, David would join the queue, search his pocket for change. Colby didn’t like to say anything but one time he caught Megan’s eye and knew she thought the same thing: no-one was going to pick up at the other end.

But David would take his place in line, and he’d push the coins through the meter and dial the number. He’d wait a few minutes and then put down the phone. The change clattered out again, and the three of them would move on.

Colby wondered: if he called home would his mother pick up the phone? Or even his sister? What exactly was going on, anyway? It had been days since anyone had heard new news; instead, the proliferation of rumours continued apace but nobody had details, nobody had facts. He didn’t think they could keep going like this. As a Federal Agent, Colby held onto the solidarity of facts; they all did. But as a soldier…well, he knew that things just weren’t that simple.

Waiting for David to come out of the fourth queue that day, Megan and Colby sat down by the roadside. Megan stretched out her legs; closing her eyes, she leaned her head back, exposing her face to the sun. If Colby didn’t know better, he’d think the three of them had just gone for a stroll, a midday picnic. _Yeah, in the middle of the highway_. He shook his head. He was beginning to lose a hold on reality.

“Don’t you want to call home?” Megan asked.

“Don’t suppose it would make much difference.” Colby sat down next to her, crossing his legs. He nodded towards David. “Think things are much better in New York?”

Megan shook her head. “Closer to Washington. Things are probably worse.” She looked at him, then, as though appraising him. For a moment he thought maybe she was about to ask him another question, but then she turned back towards David.

“We need to get back to LA. We need to get back to home ground, back to somewhere where we know the lay of the land.” She sighed, shaking her head. “What a mess.”

They heard David slam the phone back in the cradle; heard the familiar jangle and clattering of coins as they fell out into the change gully. He scuffled back to them, kicking at the dust. “Phone’s ringing, you know. She must be out.”

Colby didn’t even try to argue differently.

 

 

**v.**

“David, nobody’s going to pick up!”

David didn’t answer, just shoved the change violently back into his pocket. Megan reached for his hand, but he stalked off in front of them, walking quickly to alleviate the adrenaline.

Megan turned to face Colby. “He just wants to hope for something, Colby.”

“We don’t have time to keep stopping.”

She shrugged, scuffed her shoes in the California dust as David walked further and further away from them. Colby took her hand and they kept moving.

 

 

**vi.**

They made it back to LA half a day later. The poverty was excruciating; whole buildings had disappeared, torn down to rubble. People were living in make shift tents, babies were crying for food. It felt as though they’d stepped into a natural disaster movie. Megan blanched at the sight of the roads: cars upturned, burnt out; windows smashed, with glass littering the sidewalk like candy wrappers, glinting in the light.

David found a group of men struggling to unearth a woman and her two sons from under a bank of rubble. It looked as though the arch of the building had crumbled in on them, leaving them in an urban cave. The three of them joined the party, pulling away the rubble as quickly and as carefully as possible. They pulled out the boys one at a time before Colby turned back to lift out the woman. She clawed at him manically, weeping painfully. “Thank you, oh god bless you— thank you!” Megan had to pry her fingers off Colby’s shirt to pull her away; when she let go, he felt a little emptier. He looked at David. David shrugged. What else could they do?

 

 

**vii.**

Suburbia was still settled and peaceful when they reached there. The stunning normality of it was almost sickening compared to the wreckage in the city centre. They made their way to the Eppes’ house. David peered through the window, trying to discern if there was anyone inside; Colby checked the car still in the driveway. Megan watched them both for a moment before knocking on the door. “Hello, Charlie? Alan? Is anyone in?”

The sound of her knuckles against the wood made the birds scatter, breaking the silence as they fluttered off. Megan turned the handle to the door, and watched as it swung open. She looked at David; he shrugged, shaking his head.

Megan called again as she stepped over the threshold. “Alan? Don? _Charlie_?” Colby followed her closely, looking around over her shoulder. “Is anyone in? Hello?”

Pushing past her, Colby and David came into the still house. It was just like the street: as though time had stopped. The TV was on, buzzing with static; the table was laid for dinner. Megan stepped into the kitchen and had to catch her breath. Turning off the stove, she took the now burnt food off the heat. She looked around, sadly.

“You think Don got them out?” David asked.

“Car’s still in the driveway.” Colby pointed out, foraging through the fridge.

“More than one way to get out,” Megan added, still looking around. “Maybe they’re at CalSci? Larry’s got his underground bunkers there, the labs and everything.” She sat down at the table and shook her head tiredly. “What are we doing here? What are we going to do even if we find them?” She sighed. “We have no idea what is going on. We need to get information, quickly. We need to find out what happened. I mean, where _is_ everybody?”

“No.” Colby dropped a loaf of bread on the table. “We need to eat.”

 

 

**viii.**

They slept in the Eppes’ house that night, the three of them camped out in the living room like unwanted guests. Megan had curled up on the single seat and quickly fallen asleep; Colby and David took opposite ends of the double. It was the first comfortable sleep any of them had in over a month.

A rattling at the backdoor woke Colby. Squinting in the dark, he looked for a clock. 4.30 am. Without disturbing the others, he crouched low and began to move to the back of the house. There was another sharp rattle, and then a dull clunking sounds as someone dropped something. Megan woke suddenly; she looked at Colby. He pressed a finger to his lips and pointed to the kitchen. Megan nodded, sitting still, fully awake now; completely alert.

Whoever the intruder was, they weren’t making any pretences of silence. Colby could see a figure wandering around, peering through the cupboards, trying to find food. They got to the fridge and opened the door; the white fluorescent light flooded the darkness, momentarily blinding him. That’s when he recognised who it was.

“Amita?”

She gave a little shriek, dropping the boxes she was carrying. Megan appeared at the other end of the room, David behind her, finally awake.

“ _Colby_?”

There was a moment when nobody moved and then Amita took a cautious step forward, flinging herself at him, holding on a little more tightly than he would have expected from someone he barely knew. Megan pried her away from him, drawing her into a comforting hug as she started to cry. Colby looked at David; David looked back. Neither of them said anything.

After a few awkward moments, Amita untangled herself from Megan, and then went to pick up the food she’d been foraging for. She was staying with some friends; most of them had been at CalSci when the chaos had started. “Campus was up in arms,” she muttered, opening the fridge. “Half the buildings are burnt out. Some of us were hiding in the labs but they smoked us out.”

“What about Larry?” Megan asked, “Charlie? Have you seen them?”

Amita dropped the boxes and packages of food on the table with a sigh. “I haven’t seen Charlie. He ran off as soon as we heard your building was under siege. Alan called me a day later to see if I knew where he was but I—” She tailed off, uncertain. “So Larry and I stayed together, but then when they tore down the mayor’s office...”

“The hell?” Colby didn’t bother to look at David; he knew what he’d see there – the loss of hope, the anger, the confusion. Now wasn’t the time to be embroiled in any of that.

“...and he said he’d be back.” She sniffled, tucking her hair behind her ear. The gesture was oddly comforting to see; it was a marker that some things hadn’t changed. “That was a fortnight a go. Some of us have been hiding in the police cells, I just came out to get food. There’s nothing left.”

 

 

**ix.**

Amita left them the address of the precinct where she and her friends were staying, hugging them all tightly before leaving. Before she had gone, Megan asked her if she knew why the streets were so empty.

“They came down the roads, asking for people to join them. If you weren’t with them, you were against them.”

“What did they do?” David asked; no-one had the presence of mind to ask who 'they' were. “What did they do to the resisters?”

She had shuddered violently. “They killed them.”

As they neared midday, the three of them packed as much food as they could carry into some plastic grocery bags and set off out again. It wasn’t safe, Colby argued, to stay in one place. They had to find who was in charge and work out _what the hell was going on_. David wanted to stay in the security of the Eppes’ house but Megan had reasoned him out of it. “There’s no one left, David. It’s just us. And we have to keep moving.”

She looked tired; exhausted. They’d been moving for near on three months, now, trying to make sense of the devastation around them. Colby still didn’t think he could believe his own eyes. Nothing about what was happening made any kind of logical sense to him and yet there they were, the three of them, keeping on the move, keeping active. He just wished he knew where they were going.

 

 

**x.**

The attack, when it came, knocked them for six. The streets were quiet but they kept to the sidewalks and took back roads and side alleys. Colby didn’t want them out in the open; it left them more vulnerable to attack. Somewhere within the month since the siege, Colby had started to work on autopilot, his instincts leading him back to his military training. Survival was the key, he knew that, but it was getting harder to explain that to Megan and David. Colby knew David was planning on making a break for New York any day soon, and he stayed awake, making sure to keep an eye on him.

Megan was doing better than Colby thought she would. He knew she had sisters somewhere in the state but she never once mentioned them, or her parents. Colby tried not to think about his mom and his sister; he preferred to concentrate on the absolutes of the here and now.

Three days after leaving the Eppes house, they came across the first of the dump sites. It was Megan who’d found the bodies, hundreds of them piled up room after room. She ran out into the street and threw up repeatedly, even though her stomach was empty. Eventually she was just retching. Colby gave her some water, helped her to wash her face a little. David leant back against the wall of the building – _Morgan and Weasley Insurance_ , the sign read, cracked in three places, with some of the letters missing – and Megan sat down, head in her hands. Maybe it was getting to her more than Colby had anticipated.

They sat there for another ten minutes, trying to get a good hold of reality before moving on. The midday sun skittered across the paving slabs, glinting off shards of broken glass. The air was still. Too still.

“Come on,” Colby urged, pulling Megan up by her arm, “We’ve got to keep going.”

“Going where?” Megan protested. David moved closer from behind, dwindling tiredly.

“It doesn’t matter, we’ve just got to keep moving.”

“Colby—”

 

 

**xi.**

The first shot rings out, snapping through the air like a whip; the glass in the building behind them buckles as the bullet spins through. Colby didn’t think there was really anymore glass to break, but in an instant that’s forgotten as he hauls Megan out of the line of fire. David ducks behind a couple of cars that have banked up on the sidewalk; Colby and Megan make it behind an upturned, burnt-out bus.

After the first shot comes a volley; bullets hit hard surfaces with a rapid rattle. Years of training kick in, the three of them crouching low and taking cover. Colby reaches for his gun, fumbling to release it from his holster; Megan rounds the other end of the bus, trying to make out where the shots were coming from. Colby swears, hoping the bus is out of gas as he fiddles with his ammo, trying to get the gun to take.

There’s a vicious yell, and chaos erupts. Eight to ten men run down the street, yelling and shooting errantly but Colby quickly figures that as long as the three of them can ward them away from their current position, they’ll be fine. Except the eight to ten men turn into a mob and between them, they’re low on ammo. He knows David only had a few rounds left, Megan too. They have to move. They _have_ to move.

A yell from the other end of the street attracts his attention and he sees more men – some women, too – running in. Initially he can’t tell the difference between them and the first group. It’s Megan who works it out. Grabbing him by the arm, she forces him to take cover as a second volley comes from their attackers. “They’re on our side.”

“What?”

“Colby, I saw Jameson in that group. They’re on our side.”

As the federal officers team in, Megan pulls Colby up. “We have to go. Now!” Dashing between the cars, Colby signals frantically to David, hoping to make him realise there are friendlies coming from the west. David takes the hint and heads towards the second crowd; Colby pounds after him, listening through the sound of gunfire for Megan’s familiar footfalls following in his wake.

Somewhere in amongst the federal agents, Colby manages to gleam a few familiar faces, including two of the security patrol that used to guard their floor. David runs straight for them, Colby following quickly behind him. They take cover behind the battling groups, panting for breath.

“Shit, where’s Megan?”

Colby ducks around the car they’re leant against to see if he can find her. In the melee of running and what seems like tens upon tens of legs, he finally sees her hunched for cover across the street.

“Shit. Shit!” He turns to David. “Stay here, okay? Do not move. I’m going to get Megan. Do _not_ move, Sinclair!” Shell-shocked, David only nods. Colby prepares to make his move when the familiar face from the crowd comes sharply into focus.

“Jameson?”

“Granger!”

“What the hell’s going on?”

“It’s called resistance. Hey, where’d you think you’re going?” He pushes Colby back to safety behind the car. “You can’t go out there again. We need to get you back to our digs. Arm you up with extra ammo.”

Colby shakes his head furiously. After all of this, when they’ve finally found somewhere safe – or safer, familiar ground – he isn’t about to leave Megan out in the storm. “Reeves— Reeves is still out there.”

“We’ll get her—”

“Dammit, Reeves is out there!” He pushes the ex-security guard out of the way, and makes for Megan’s position, all the while ducking for cover. She’s pinned down about twenty yards away, and the only way to get to her is to make a wide circumference.

The noise is enough to stop thought; Colby remembers being in Iraq, under weapons fire, trying to get a comrade out. He can’t go through that again, he won’t. Blocking out the sound as much as he can, he keeps his focus on Megan crouching for cover. Forgetting the noise and the tumult around him, he makes a beeline for her; he can only see Megan, nothing else. Not the swatches of men and women dressed in black, not the crowd of civilians still rushing in from the east. If you had asked him afterwards what colour car Megan was hiding behind, he couldn’t have told you. He only sees Megan.

 

 

**xii.**

Only when he gets to Megan’s side does the environment flood back in on his senses; the sharp tang of weapon’s fire burns his nostrils, and his hands are clammy with sweat. He can feel the midday heat beating down with heavy insistence, and his ears ring with the sound of rifle fire. He doesn’t know where the guns have come from, and he’s not about to stop and ask. Obviously people have been stirring in their absence.

Megan grabs a hold of Colby’s hand as soon as he is near enough and drags him behind the car. “I couldn’t get out,” she gasps, clawing for air, “Even if I made it past the civilians, there’s still our lot. Dammit, what is going on?”

“No time,” Colby ushers her into a ready position, her hand tightly encapsulated in his as he looks up and down the street. The bodies are beginning to pile horridly in the middle but it might give them enough cover to make it back to David. “We have to run, okay? On three – one, two, _three_!” He pulls hard on Megan’s arm; they run in a straight line, as fast as they can. Colby almost stumbles, but Megan pushes him forward from behind, until they’re both back by David and Jameson. The older man says nothing, just forces them down. Megan hugs David with relief; Colby makes sure to stay close to her.

“Alright, head east,” Jameson instructs, “We’re bunked out in the city bank. The vaults are a freaking gold mine.”

Megan looks at him, appalled.

“For survival, Reeves. What do you take me for?” He unclips the short-range rifle he has hung around his neck and passes it to Colby. “Remember this little queen? Remember, head east for the bank. Marchev and Lewisham are by the door, they’ll know you on sight. Now get moving, go, go, go!”

Colby pats him on the back before following Megan and David down the street, away from the mass of violence behind them. They break quickly into a run; the calls at their back make Colby nervous. Megan reaches out for his sleeve and pulls him along until the three of them are running together.

The whistling sound that pierces their ears is the only warning they get for what comes next.

 

 

**xiii.**

For a moment, Colby forgets where he is. All he can see is smoke, all he can feel is smoke. The smell assaults him immediately, and the whistle whines through his eardrums, loud and painful. He drops to his knees, his hands flying for his ears.

There’s an explosion; the force knocks him back; the stench of searing flesh makes him gag. He tries to open his eyes, tries to find David and Megan, but he can’t see anything for the smoke that’s beginning to cloud his lungs. Staying low, he tries to crawl forward to where he last remembers seeing his friends. His hand comes into contact with a body in a dishevelled business suit. Colby grabs for the hand, pulls the body forward.

—David.

Colby retches almost instantaneously, scrambling furiously away. The heat from the explosion bites at his skin, and he panics, tries to stand, stumbles backwards. A hand catches him, steadies him and helps to pull him away. Colby can’t say anything, can barely think. Oh god, oh god, oh god. _David_.

 

 

**xiv.**

“Colby, come on.”

But he can’t move. There’s nothing beyond this.

Megan’s hand shakes him from his reverie; he looks in her face, sees the angry desperation lurking just beneath the surface and makes a decision. He takes her hand, and though there’s no-one behind them, they start to run.

 

 

**xv.**

They never make it to the bank. Instead, Megan leads them away from the city centre, away from the noise and the anger. Colby doesn’t speak for three days, just remembers David’s burnt-out corpse, the way his eyes stared accusingly at him, as though it was Colby’s fault that he’d been so close to the missile. _And where the hell had the damn thing come from_? He can’t sleep. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees that face – not the face of a friend, but the face of a dead man. A corpse. A corpse that was a man, a man that was a friend. And Colby had always thought that he was past all of the death and the destruction. He’d thought he was free.

On the fourth night, Megan shakes him from the nightmare and he nearly lashes out at her. Momentarily surprised, she’s almost frightened, but Megan’s seen enough nightmares in the real world to know that Colby’s lashing out unintentionally. He looks at her carefully with only the light from street lamps further down the boulevard to light her face. In the weak neon light she looks ghostly and emaciated; she’s lost weight. Her hair is greasy and scraggly, pulled haphazardly from her face and tied back with a scrap from her blouse. She’s still wearing the clothes from the siege; he is too. They both look like hell. She puts her hands on his shoulders, steadies him, tries to keep him in the now.

“You can lean on me,” she says eventually, when she’s certain his eyes are focusing on hers and not just glazed over with insomnia. He looks at her – really looks – taking in her aged appearance, and he nods, grateful, so grateful for this one friend, this woman that had driven him half-crazy when they had first met. He nods slightly and Megan shifts so that she can hugs him, one arm thrown over his back, the other hand stroking his hair. He falls asleep to the sound of her voice whispering, reassuring. His nightmare doesn’t surface again that night.

 

 

**xvi.**

Two and a half months after the siege, the two of them wind their way to Colby’s apartment. The place is trashed like most of the city but his closet is still intact and the water is still working so they manage to shower and stock up on clothes. Megan manages to seem petite in Colby’s oversized shirt and trousers; she keeps her clothes like mementos. Her own apartment block is nothing more than rubble anymore.

They’ve spent the time trying to map out where people are and what’s going on in the rest of the states. From what they’ve been able to find out, the chaos is worst in Washington D.C. where people have been round up and shot. Megan balks every time they hear another similar story, this time in Seattle, in New York, in Miami. Colby’s given up trying to make sense of what’s happening; he’d rather stay alive.

They go to the city bank where they find a cut and paste militia of ex-government agencies – FBI, CIA, NSA, all of them, trying to work together for once. The irony doesn’t escape Megan who laughs hysterically when she sees what’s going on. “Only took an apocalypse,” she quips, but her laughter is hollow and dry. It’s not really all that funny.

They find Amita, still hiding in the precinct with other university students, although many have died from illness and starvation. The bodies are still being piled up in an organised fashion, room after room after room. Colby hates it, wonders why they don’t just torch the death houses (as they’ve come to call them) and stop the stench from growing. He tries to set one group alight but a man tackles him and confiscates the lighter. Colby doesn’t try again after that.

 

 

**xvii.**

It’s the little girls that finally break Megan. They’ve been wandering around the city, collecting parts to get a vehicle in working order so that maybe they can get out of the city. They still manage to stumble into civilian raids although the cross fire is never as bad as the first incursion. The federal militia give them rifles and ammo, then send them on their way, so now they walk down the street like the refugees and militant combatants in the photographs that used to filter in from Africa and the Middle East. Colby can only imagine what the rest of the world thinks of them now.

He sticks close to Megan; they try to avoid straying from roads that they don’t know. Jameson warns them about city hotspots where the civilians are still up in arms, and Colby asks how the they know if someone’s from the government or not.

“They don’t,” Jameson answers, “but they shoot strangers on sight.”

They sleep in empty buildings, the ones that are still left standing and are relatively unscarred by fires or explosions. Heavy gunfire gets them moving quickly – and in the opposite direction to the noise. As soon as Colby gets that familiar feeling on the back of his neck, the one that tells him his instincts are two steps ahead of his conscious mind, he grabs hold of Megan’s hand and makes her run. Maybe it’s just paranoia, maybe it’s hypersensitivity but they aren’t dead yet and cold instinct’s got them this far.

But as they near the end of the third month of hell, they narrowly miss another skirmish between the militia and the civvies (Colby’s got other names for them – “crazy murdering blood tribes is one – but Megan slaps him lightly on the wrist whenever his mood takes a more sour turn), and a turn about leads them into a laundrette. There, in the back office, they find a woman hanging from the rafters. Whilst Colby takes her down, Megan goes searching through the rest of the rooms. When she comes down, Colby’s finished looking at the corpse.

“She didn’t do this herself. She’s got defensive wounds all over her wrists, and her watch is on her right wrist. She was probably left handed. This is a right-side knot.” He shows Megan the noose. That’s when he sees how pale her face is. “Megan?”

She doesn’t speak for a moment, just starts to shake uncontrollably. She reaches for the chair, the desk, for Colby, before crouching down and covering her head with her hands. She’s trembling viciously and crying, sobbing horridly as she rocks backwards and forwards on her haunches. Colby kneels in front of her, tries to take her hands away from her face, but she shakes her head in protest and his hands fall, redundant, to his sides.

“Megan?”

“There are... I don’t even...” she looks up, her eyes red and sore, “There are little girls in the far office.” She shakes her head, moans furiously. “Little girls. _Beaten_ , I swear, I don’t know what with. Little girls, Colby. They’re barely older than my sister’s kids!” She shakes her head again, openly weeping, unable to stop. Colby’s hands hover over her, uncertain and nervous. “They were just _little girls_ …oh god, Colby!” She slaps the floor with her fist, “What the hell is _wrong_ with people? What is _wrong_ with _us_?”

And then she’s choking too much to speak, to feel, and Colby doesn’t know what to do so he does the only thing he can and holds her tightly until she stops sobbing.

 

 

**xviii.**

They take the dead woman and her two children, and they set them alight in the dump yard behind the laundrette. Megan breathes out a prayer. Colby can’t tell if it’s for the three bodies or for them, but when Megan reaches for his hand and says _Amen_ , he echoes her, before tugging on her hand and pulling her away.

 

 

**xix.**

For six months they collect spare automobile parts and raid houses for food. Eventually they stop visiting the militia at all, and they leave the precincts alone on the day they find Amita in one of the death houses.

They never find the Eppes, not a single trace of them. Sometimes the two of them talk about them, theorise the many ways they might have escaped the city’s wrath. Colby sets scrap paper on fire so they can at least try to be warm, and Megan curls up next to him, her head on his shoulder. It’s almost quiescent and domestic – or it would be if they weren’t on the third floor of a half-collapsed tower block. Megan finds it increasingly harder to breathe, the build up of soot and concrete dust eating away at her lungs. Colby makes certain to keep her close and they never run without holding hands; too easy to lose track of real bodies in amongst the mass of riots.

“You know, it can’t last,” Megan reasserts, “Humans are naturally pack animals. We need a functioning society to survive.”

Colby doesn’t tell her that the chances for anyone surviving are pretty slim. They’re beating the odds, after all.

 

 

**xxx.**

Nine months after the siege, they drive out of LA as fast as they can, the motor burning and the engine rattling in the hood of the converted jeep. Megan clings on to the sharp metal frame as Colby speeds away, the jeep bouncing over the rubble of the dead city.

They cross the city boarders through underground tunnels, left by the immigrants, and Megan laughs when the bullets fly past their ears. Colby can’t help it; he grins, too. They drive forward in a straight line until they can’t go any further, and then they pull into a gas station to refill and rest for the night.

Looking out the back of the jeep, Megan watches the burning embers of Los Angeles glowing ominously in the distance. Colby hands her an old packet of peanuts he found in the abandoned station. She doesn’t even notice that they’re soft and tasteless with age, just grabs at gratefully at the food. He smiles, then looks towards the city again.

“So much for the angels, hey Colby?” Megan looks at him, the smile not quite reaching her eyes. He reaches out and strokes her cheek affectionately. The gesture surprises them both.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, finally. “So much for angels.”

 

 

**end.**


End file.
